ROME — Sophia Loren once served time in an Italian jail for tax evasion. Now Italy’s top court has handed the actress a victory in a nearly 40-year-long battle over back taxes.

The Rome-based Court of Cassation ruled Wednesday the beauty icon was right when calculating tax owed on her 1974 income. Loren’s tax experts, applying one of Italy’s not-infrequent tax amnesties, calculated that she owed tax on 60 percent of her income that year, but tax officials insisted she should have paid tax on 70 percent of her taxable income. The top court decided that Loren was right.

In separate tax dispute, Loren voluntarily returned to Italy in 1982 to be jailed, serving 17 days of a 30-day sentence for tax evasion. She said then her deceased tax preparer had erred.